It is always astonishing to watch the fields turn green in the spring. One day they are brown, the bleached flat brown of late winter grass that has neither shine nor movement; and then a few days later they are vivid green. You can see it happen: first along the north hedgerow where it is warmest, and then in fingers along areas of wet ground, and then in regular bands where the hay was cut the shortest*, and then the patterns vanish into the grass. Last will be the area shaded by the south hedgerow. On a day like today, when the ground is warm but it is cold and raining, you can actually see the difference during the course of the day.

The lawns are going to look exceedingly good this year. For the first time in living memory, they all got raked in the spring. So no thatch, no matted leaves. We hadn’t raked them in the fall, just let the leaves get mulched in by the mower.

*The cutter bar must have needed a bit of adjustment, not much, just a centimeter or two, but there are noticeable stripes.